Brooks to proceed. The motion was agreed to, and Mr. Brooks proceeded, reiterating the charge.

The House adjourned, Mr. Stevens holding the floor. The next morning he yielded to Mr. Boutwell, who was the immediate representative in Congress of General Butler.

After some preliminary remarks, Mr. Boutwell said: *

"Now, Mr. Speaker, I come to the testimony in reference to the $50,000 transaction in New Orleans. I ask the attention of the gentleman from New York to one point, because, when I have presented the evidence, I shall put to him a question on my own responsibility as a member of this House, as a Representative of a district, as a citizen of this country, interested somewhat in the reputation of a man who is already historical, and who, since the administration of Hastings in India, has had a larger command and greater interests of the country placed in his hands than almost any other person, and I shall expect a definite and distinct answer to that question; and therefore I put him on his guard at this early moment. The question I shall put to him is, (asking the Clerk first to read the extract from the gentleman's speech which was contained in General Butler's letter,) whether he reaffirms the statement which he made or whether he retracts it? And according to the course which he takes shall be mine as to some observations which I will then submit."

He then read evidence, showing that Smith, the claimant of the $50,000 in gold allowed to have been robbed of him by General Butler, was an enemy of his country, and the firm of which he was a member were agents for the Confederate loan. He then read the order of General Butler, creating a military commission, consisting of General Shepley, W. N. Mercer, and Thomas J. Durant, to inquire whether the specie in question was the property of the Confederate States, or had been used in any way to aid the Confederate States. He then read the evidence taken before such commission, on both sides, and after argument of counsel. The commission decided that, "With regard to the $50,000, the commission think there is ground for detention until the proper department at Washington can be heard from." This award was made June 17th, 1862, and on the 2d of July thereafter General Butler reports the facts to the Secretary of the Treasury. †

He read other correspondence with the Secretary of War, and the counsel of Smith, and then added:

"In the first place, there is no element of the crime of robbery in this transac tion from the beginning to the end. The seizure was made by a public officer, a military commander, in pursuance of what he believed then to be his duty, and

* Congressional Globe, Second Session, Thirty-eighth Congress, p. 394. +Congressional Globe, Second Session, Thirty-eighth Congress, p. 395.

what I believe a jury of his countrymen any where, on the evidence, would find to have been his duty under the circumstances in which he was placed. He submitted the whole question of the right of property, as far as it could be submitted, to a military commission, and he followed the decree, or award made by that commission, and within fifteen days reported the facts to the Government, and from that day to this he has always been ready and responsible. He has again and again solicited the Department to take the money and assume the responsibility-either to take it as belonging to the Government, or pay it over to Samuel Smith & Co., and relieve him."

Mr. Boutwell then, after reading the charge made by Mr. Brooks, demanded whether he reaffirms the charge, or retracts it? and closed by stating, "I yield the floor for a reply."

Mr. Brooks said: "When the gentleman concludes I shall be happy to make reply. The introduction of his remarks shows that he is not entitled to courtesy."

"Mr. BOUTWELL. I understand, then, that the gentleman is neither prepared at this moment to reaffirm the statement made in that speech, nor to retract it. On this evidence, conclusive as to the falsity of the charge, the gentleman from New York stands silent, and will neither reaffirm the declaration that he has made to this House and to the country, that Major General Butler of the army is a gold robber, nor will he, upon this evidence, retract it. Has it made no impression upon him? Does he not comprehend it? Does he yet persist in allowing that declaration made in his speech to stand upon the record? If he has a name to live, does not the dread of posterity inspire him to do justice to a servant of the country? Is he still silent? Has he no voice to reaffirm what he has declared, or is he yet destitute, shall I say of manliness, to admit that he was mistaken?"

Mr. Brooks, in reply, among other things, said: *

"No man, Mr. Speaker, did more, or, I might say, as much, to excite and arouse the feelings of this country, and to bring about that hostility which led to the clash of arms as Major General Butler. Belonging to the Democratic party, and the most ultra of that party, he was ever first and foremost in stimulating and encouraging that hostility and invective which would lead to excitement and to war; and whenever the Democratic party was disposed to compromise or make concessions in any way which would lead to pacification, he was the last of all to yield, and the first and foremost to bring about that collision of opinion which would lead to this clash of arms. And yet I, who am of the school of Clay, and of Massachusetts' own Webster, trained in obedience to the Constitution and laws, never even responsible for any of the errors of the Democratic party, hardly connected with that party except so far as it chose to honor me here with its sympathy and its votes, elected here upon the floor of this House in opposition to the machinery of that party; I am denounced by the Representative of this General Butler as a man more disposed to welcome a rebel uniform of gray than the blue uniform of a soldier of the United States!

"Sir, in the Charleston Convention, which led to the rupture of the Democratic party and the election of Lincoln, if Butler himself had been the paid agent of Jeff. Davis and of the conspirators to destroy this Union, he could not have acted a more efficient or a more fatal part in sundering and dividing that party and bringing about this collision than he did as a delegate from Massachusetts to that convention. I never voted in my life for Jefferson Davis, while Major General Butler • Congressional Globe, Second Session, Thirty-eighth Congress, p. 397.

voted fifty-seven times in the Charleston Convention for this same Jefferson Davis, to make him President of the United States. Compare my record, then, with his. Compare my past with his. A sagacious man, like General Butler, a man of talent and power and capacity, must have known very well, while he was thus acting in the Charleston Convention, where all that action would lead; that it would lead to a disruption of the party of the Democracy, and in that disruption to a triumph of the Republican party. *

*

*

"The honorable gentleman from Massachusetts was pleased to say that since the record of Hastings in India no man had had so wide and so extensive a command as Major General Butler. The honorable gentleman from Massachusetts will permit me to say that I think that was a most unfortunate allusion. The history of Hastings in India is in a good degree the history of Major General Butler at New Orleans and throughout all those regions on the Mississippi. I will not recall that history; but I will recall the fact that years afterward the proudest and the loftiest spirits in the British Parliament, from Burke onward, arraigned Hastings for his conduct in India as I have arraigned Butler here; and as others hereafter will arraign him on the floor of this House, for his conduct in New Orleans and elsewhere. And, sir, the history of Butler will, I venture to predict, be the fate of Hastings; supported by a ministry, though but feebly and partially supported, yet recorded in history as a plunderer and a robber, and bequeathing to posterity a name immortal for that plunder and robbery alone."

Mr. Stevens in conclusion, among other things, said: *

"The evidence has done great justice and great favor to Major General Butler, for, sir, there is not a candid man, there is not an honest man in this House who will dare to say that that evidence is not a complete and perfect vindication of Major General Butler from all the charges made against him by the gentleman from New York; it not only vindicates him, but shows him to have, in all his acts and in all his correspondence, acted, not only like an honest man and faithful officer, but like a gentleman and a well educated man. The whole of the correspondence would do credit not only to his heart but to his great ability and his scholarship and his professional learning. And I will say here that, so far as professional learning goes, I was long ago struck with his correspondence with the gentleman who was sent down there by the Government, Mr. Reverdy Johnson. General Butler showed more ability, more knowledge of the law of nations, and was more correct in his positions than that gentleman; and if General Butler's doctrine had prevailed, $800,000 in gold, which was seized by him, would have been kept from supplying the rebel armies, to which it was applied, when turned over, under the advice of the eminent counsel to whom I refer."

Of the great public services rendered by Butler, he said:

"The gentleman says that General Butler has done no service to his country. Service to his country! If it is true that he helped to kill the Democratic party, he did a great deal of service to the country. [Laughter.] I do not know that fact. That took place before secession, and is, therefore, a little further back than I choose to go. But if he was wrong then, the gentleman from New York has been going wrong ever since and getting worse all the time, while General Butler has been getting better and better, and is now an excellent man. I wish to God they would all reform in the same way. [Laughter.] Did he not come on in the midst of peril and seize Baltimore, which others had failed to do? Did he not go to New Orleans and seize it, and administer its affairs better, and to the greater satisfaction of every loyal man, than has been done since, although I do not draw comparisons? Talk about that being a parallel with the administration of Warren Hastings! All that I have to say is this: Warren Hastings was made immortal by the talents of the counsel who prosecuted him. He was acquitted, as the public

*Congressional Globe, Second Session, Thirty-eighth. Congress, p. 400.

will acquit General Butler. The only difference is that there has been no pure and upright and manly eloquence in this prosecution, to immortalize General Butler, as in the case of Warren Hastings."

He thus speaks of John Brown:

"He also talks about John Brown. The gentleman well knows that that class of people to whom he referred were very few in the United States. None of the Republican party belonged to that class. But, sir, I will state the difference between John Brown and the gentleman from New York. While I have not a word to say in extenuation of the conduct of John Brown, nor anything to say against his sentence, yet, sir, there are times in the history of men when there are such great evils that the motives of some men who attempt, although in an irregular manner, to eradicate those evils, will overshadow all the irregularities in the eye of posterity, although we here at the moment cannot forget or forgive them. There are times, sir, when posterity will look beyond the immediate step to see where a man proposed to land, what were his intentions and his motives, and they will judge according to the ulterior design. Now, sir, the motive of John Brown-honest, upright, but mistaken in his means-no man who loves freedom can help applauding, although none of us would justify the means. But upon the principle which I have mentioned, when the gentleman from New York and myself will be moldering in the dust and forgotten, or only unpleasantly remembered, the memory of John Brown, I will venture to predict, will grow brighter and brighter through coming ages; and the State of Virginia itself, by its own freemen and its own freedmen, will, within the lives of some now present, raise a monument to his memory upon the very place where his gallows stood."

Nothing could be more complete and conclusive than this vindication of General Butler, so far as regards the transaction in question. The charge has never since been repeated.

The Thirty-eighth Congress drew towards its close. It had done its duty. Differing with the Executive on points of administration, as many of its members did, yet it had faithfully sustained him in carrying on the war. It had placed in his hands, with perfect confidence, the vast resources of the country. It had voted increased taxes to maintain the National credit. It had amended the Enrollment Law to give it more efficiency. It had obliterated forever from the National Statute Book the barbarous slave code. More than all, and above all, it had passed the constitutional amendment, prohibiting and abolishing slavery forever. The records of this Congress, and those of the Thirtyseventh, are full of the wisest statesmanship and eloquent expressions of the noblest sentiments of patriotism and humanity. These records will long be consulted, for the story of the forensic conflict between liberty and slavery. That conflict is there recorded in the speeches, votes, and legislation, during this, the most eventful period of American history. He who in the future would fully comprehend

that history, must study it in these eloquent discussions. The Thirty-eighth Congress ended, and passed into history, with the following valedictory of Schuyler Colfax, Speaker of the House:*

"Gentlemen of the House of Representatives, 'the parting hour has come; and yonder clock, which 'takes no note of time but from its loss,' will soon announce that the Congress of which we are members has passed into history. Honored by your votes with this responsible position, I have faithfully striven to perform its always complex and often perplexing duties without partisan bias and with the sincerest impartiality. Whether I have realized the true ideal of a just presiding officer, aiding, on the one hand, the advance of the public business, with the responsibility of which the majority is charged, and, on the other hand, allowing no trespass on the parliamentary rights of the minority, must be left for others to decide. But looking back now over the entire Congress, I cannot remember a single word addressed to you which 'dying I would wish to blot.'

"On this day, which by spontaneous consent is being observed wherever our flag floats as a day of national rejoicing, with the roar of cannon greeting the rising sun on the rock-bound coast of Maine, echoed and re-echoed by answering volleys from city to city, and from mountain peak to mountain peak, till from the Golden Gate it dies away far out on the calm Pacific, we mingle our congratulations with those of the freemen we represent over the victories for the Union that have made the winter just closing so warm with joy and hope. With them we rejoice that the national standard, which our revolutionary fathers unfurled over the land, but which rebellion sought to strike down and destroy, waves as undisputed at this glad hour over the cradle of secession at Charleston as over the cradle of liberty at Faneuil Hill, and that the whole firmament is aflame with the brilliant glow of triumphs for that cause so dear to every patriot heart. We have but recently commemorated the birthday of the Father of his Country, and renewed our pledge to each other that the nation he founded should not be sundered by the sword of treason. And the good news that assures the salvation of the Republic is doubly joyous, because it tells us that the prayers of the past four years have not been unanswered, and that the priceless blood of our brave defenders, so freely offered and so profusely spilt, has not been shed in vain. We turn, too, to-day, with a prouder joy than ever before to that banner, brilliant with stars from the heavens and radiant with glories from the earth, which from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, from Lundy's Lane to New Orleans, and from the darker hours of the rebellion in the past, to Savannah, and Fort Sumter, and Charleston, and Columbia, and Fort Fisher, and Wilmington in the present, has ever symbolized our unity and our national life, as we see inscribed on it ineffaceably that now doubly noble inscription, 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.'

"But, in this hour of gladness I cannot forget the obligations, paramount and undying, we owe to our heroic defenders on every battle-field upon the land, and every wave-rocked monitor and frigate upon the sea. Inspired by the sublimest spirit of self-sacrifice, they have realized a million-fold the historic fable of Curtius as they have offered to close up, with their own bodies, if need be, the yawning chasm that imperiled the Republic. For you and me, and for their country, they have turned their backs on the delights of home, and severed the tenderest of ties to brave death in a thousand forms; to confront with unblanched cheek the tempest of shot, and shell, and flame; to storm frowning batteries and bristling intrenchments; to bleed, to suffer, and to die. As we look from this Capitol Hill over the nation there are crushed and broken hearts in every hamlet; there are wounded soldiers, mangled with rebel bullets, in every hospital; there are patriot graves in every church yard; there are bleaching bones on every battle-field. It is the lofty and unfaltering heroism of the honored living, and the even more honored dead, that has taken us from every valley of disaster and defeat and

*Congressional Globe, Second Session, Thirty-eighth Congress, pp. 1423-4.